The battle between McDonalds and KFC in China

Once speaking western fast food, we cannot ignore two well-known, influential fast food restaurants, which are McDonalds and KFC. They are both regarded as giants among fast food industry, and distributed internationally. Also, they both aim to working class and middle class; they share similar values that providing large-amount and high- quality food, and conducting a kind of quick and convenient lifestyle; even the prices of these two are pretty close. In fact, compared to KFC, McDonalds is a much bigger enterprise with more funds, more market shares and more influences in America. So, McDonalds should possess same superiorities and take a lead in Chinese market. In contrast, KFC is more popular, has more branches and takes up more market shares than McDonalds in China. In order to explain this situation, I found several advertisements of both McDonalds and KFC, and analyzed the values of these two brands through their respective advertisement methods.

You may be surprised to know that it was KFC who first entered China. 12th November, 1987 was the day when KFC opened its first restaurant in Beijing. McDonald on the other hand, did not enter the Chinese market until 1990. Thus KFC had a 3 year head start. The reason why KFC entered China before McDonald’s was because each produced differing research results of Chinese consumers. McDonald’s research suggested that the Chinese were very stubborn and were unlikely to take to McDonald’s products, which are traditional American fast food. However, KFC found quite the contrary, their research indicated that as long as they made some changes in their products, Chinese would accept their western fast food. As expected, KFC indeed obtained a great success in China, and even though McDonalds was competing with it all the time, it always fell behind KFC.

Why as a smaller fast food enterprise, KFC can beat McDonalds at Chinese market? The answer is simple when you saw their advertisements. Looking through the Chinese advertisements of McDonalds, we can clearly see that the main products which were highly publicized by McDonalds are still traditional, standard American fast food.   For instance, they both said “high recommendation in this month” in these two above print advertisements, and despite that they came from different months, the productions were still similar chicken hamburger, chicken wings and French fries. Obviously, McDonalds did not do the prepare work well that getting familiar with Chinese culture and Chinese eating habits, or they did not realize that how important combining the local eating culture and their own productions is.

However, KFC really adjusted their products according to their research result. Because the distinguished features of Chinese dishes are that there are variety in diet and obvious taste difference depending on regions. And KFC understood that and catered to the Chinese people far better. Although chicken was already a popular part of many dishes in China, KFC did more than offer a new take on how to cook chicken, they adapted their whole product range to meet Chinese needs but more importantly their local 

needs. For example, in this above KFC’s Chinese print advertisement, it recommended a new flavor grilled chicken hamburger with spicy sauce from SiChuan, China. I believe all Chinese know that SiChuan is famous for its spicy dishes, so this new product was pretty attractive for people who like spicy food and who come from SiChuan. Furthermore, in order to appeal to more Chinese customers, KFC even started to combine their chicken and western soup with rice, which is the most traditional and fundamental food Chinese always eat. So they released their new series of production “abundant rice dish”, which were really popular in China. The above advertisement shows this new production.

In conclusion, it is vital for a foreign restaurant to research the different food culture and unfamiliar eating habits of a new region when it entered to that region. Then, the foreign restaurant need to maintain its characteristics and meanwhile, connect local food features to its productions. Through comparing the Chinese advertisements of McDonalds and KFC, we can see despite that they aimed to same group of people, have close prices and shared similar values, KFC always can attract more Chinese customers because they understood the relationship between flavor and culture, and indeed swam with the current, adapted their productions for new surroundings. The method that combining the American style with Chinese local eating habits gave KFC the edge over its rival as McDonalds stuck firmly with its Western style in Chinese market